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Chest Building Routines And The Best Chest Exercises To Increase Bulk

Article care of simplemuscle.com

A large
thick
chest is generally one of the primary goals of
any weight trainer or bodybuilder. Visit
any gym anywhere in the world and one of the most used, if not the most
used
pieces of equipment will be the Bench Press.
Why? Because everyone wants a
massive chest. Think of Arnold
Schwarzenegger and you get the picture!

But how do we
achieve a massive
chest? What are the
best chest workouts or chest
building routines? What
are the best
chest exercises to increase bulk?
These
are the perennial questions asked by many gym junkies.
Well let me answer for you.

To
understand how to build a massive chest you must first
understand what muscles comprise the chest and how to target them
specifically.I
guarantee you there is
no point going out and doing chest building routines comprising of 10
sets of
barbell bench press every second day.Aside from obviously overtraining, you are only
targeting one area of
the chest and therefore other areas will remain underdeveloped and you
will end
up having an abnormal looking chest.

In building a strong, powerful
chest we target a
number of muscles: the Pectoralis Major
(being the primary muscle), the Pectoralis Minor,
and to a lesser degree the Serratus
Anterior, the Intercostals
and the Front
Deltoids.

The
primary and most visible muscle of the chest is the Pectoralis
Major.It
is a thick muscle
in a triangular fan shape across the entire chest area.The Pectoralis Major is connected to the
skeleton at three different points, the sternum, the clavicle (collar
bone) and
the shoulder (armpit).

The
Pectoralis Major itself is divided into two distinct
sections, the Clavicular section which is the upper portion of the
muscle
connected to the Clavicle, and the Sternal which is the lower section
of the
muscle connected to the Sternum.Whilst
they are connected in two different areas, they still
form part of the
SAME
muscle.

There
is a common misconception that the upper pec
(Clavicular section) is the Pectoralis Major and the lower pec (Sternal
section)
is the Pectoralis Minor.This
is not the
case.

The Pectoralis
Minor is a smaller triangular shaped muscle actually
situated underneath the Pectoralis
Major and is not generally visible.However this muscle is trained in conjunction with
the Pectoralis Major
and when it grows it can help to push the Pectoralis Major out to give
the
appearance of a bigger chest.

The
Serratus
Anterior are smaller muscles that cover the
side of the chest wall and around the ribs.These can sometimes be mistaken for Lats (back
muscles).Their
primary role is to help pull the
shoulder and back muscles forward.Think
of the pushing or punching movement and that is where they are
functional.The Intercostals
are smaller muscles again
which are positioned between the ribs and assist in pulling the ribs
together.

The Front
Deltoid (Front of the Shoulder) whilst not a
muscle of the chest is still utilised in many chest building routines
and when
toned correctly can help to provide greater definition to the upper
chest.

Now
as stated above, the Pectoralis Major is the primary
chest muscle and given its unique design, it has muscle fibres that run
in
several different directions.You
cannot
train all these muscle fibres effectively using just one exercise.You also need to train the
other surrounding
muscles.By hitting
the
muscles from different angles you
will achieve maximum growth in the shortest time possible.So that is why you need to
perform a number
of different chest exercises to increase bulk, as part of your chest
building
routine.

The
best chest exercises to increase bulk, strength and mass
are Compound exercises and those used primarily for shaping and toning
are
Isolation exercises.

Compound
exercises
involve the use of more than one muscle group through different joints
in order
to perform the exercise movement.Isolation exercises effectively isolate the working
muscle and only
involve movement though one joint.

Each have their place in chest building routines, it just
depends on what you want to achieve.

If
you are someone looking at primarily building a super
strong chest and increasing your bench press then you want to be
targeting
primarily compound exercises with heavy weights and low reps of 4 to 8.This will also give you
mass gains but you
may suffer from a lack of definition.

If
you are looking at building a large well defined chest
then you will want a mix of compound and isolation exercises using
medium-heavy
weights and a medium rep range of 8 to 12.This will give you good muscle size and tone but
your strength levels
won’t be as high.As
I said, you just
have to weigh up what you want to achieve.

There
are other exercises out there but these are just some
of the most common.

When
designing chest building routines, as I said
previously, you need to attack the muscles from different angles with
different
exercises.If you
focus on hitting your
Pectoralis Major from 3 different angles you will not only train all
sections
of the muscle fully but you will also train the surrounding
complimentary
muscles and achieve the fastest muscle growth and development.

Here
is one of my original
chest building routines designed
to attack the Pec muscles from 3 different angles using the incline
bench press,
the dumbbell bench press and the decline bench press. I also
provide toning using lateral flyes:

Exercise

Sets
and target reps

Weights

Incline
Bench Press

3-
12, 10, 8

Medium-Heavy

Dumbbell
Bench Press

3-
12, 10, 8

Medium-Heavy

Lateral
Flye

2-
12, 10

Medium-Heavy

Decline
Bench Press

2-
12, 10

Medium-Heavy

As a note, the best
chest exercises to increase bulk are compound
exercises performed with Dumbbells.This is because it allows
each side of the
body to work independently through the full range of movement.However limits on the
dumbbell weight range
at your gym or home or old injury may mean you are unable to use
dumbbells all
the time.That is
when a barbell bench
press should be used.

The
above chest building routine will provide you with a
solid base on which to develop a thick powerful chest.I would recommend you use a workout log to
record your progress so you know what you have to beat each time you
set foot
in the gym.Then
when you exceed the
target reps by one, i.e. you perform 13, 11, 9 it is time to increase
the
weights.